No matter how careful you are, the one risk no investor can ever eliminate is the risk of being wrong. Only by insisting on what Graham called the “margin of safety” – never overpaying, no matter how exciting an investment seems to be – can you minimize your odds of error.
BENJAMIN GRAHAMWe urge the beginner in security buying not to waste his efforts and his money in trying to beat the market. Let him study security values and initially test out his judgment on price versus value with the smallest possible sums.
More Benjamin Graham Quotes
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Have the courage of your knowledge and experience. If you have formed a conclusion from the facts and if you know your judgment is sound, act on it – even though others may hesitate or differ.
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Though business conditions may change, corporations and securities may change, and financial institutions and regulations may change, human nature remains the same.
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While enthusiasm may be necessary for great accomplishments elsewhere, on Wall Street it almost invariably leads to disaster
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To see how much a company is truly earning on the capital it deploys in its businesses, look beyond EPS to Return on Invested Capital (ROIC).
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It is absurd to think that the general public can ever make money out of market forecasts.
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The Reservoir plan is an engineering mechanism applied to the field of economics, and in its essence it has nothing to do with democracy or any other political philosophy.
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It must be fundamentally wrong to reduce production of food and fiber while one-third of our population is still ill fed and ill clothed.
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You must never delude yourself into thinking that you’re investing when you’re speculating.
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Never mingle your speculative and investment operations in the same account nor in any part of your thinking.
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The beauty of periodic rebalancing is that it forces you to base your investing decisions on a simple, objective standard.
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Every corporate security may be best viewed, in the first instance, as an ownership interest in, or a claim against, a specific business enterprise.
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Before you invest, you must ensure that you have realistically assessed your probability of being right and how you will react to the consequences of being wrong.
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The stock market resembles a huge laundry in which institutions take in large blocks of each others washing … without rhyme or reason.
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The intelligent investor should recognize that market panics can create great prices for good companies and good prices for great companies.
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The investor who permits himself to be stampeded or unduly worried by unjustified market declines in his holdings is perversely transforming his basic advantage into a basic disadvantage.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM